Keeping young people safe sits at the heart of a large proportion of the work Pharos does.  This is why we were incredibly proud to be asked to work in partnership with NYA, the National Youth Agency, to provide a free online resource to help all organisations that work with young people to do exactly that, to help keep young people safe. 

NYA is the national body for youth work in England and does some brilliant work championing young people and youth work in all its forms, supporting and representing organisations from local youth clubs and independent youth workers to national organisations such as the Scouts, Cadets and Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, for example.

Over the course of the past year, Pharos has worked closely with NYA to create a Safeguarding & Risk Management Hub – a freely accessible online resource providing safeguarding and risk management guidance, support, advice and access to training for the whole youth sector. During the midst of the pandemic, the project of drafting 45 risk management assets for publishing on The Hub and creating online risk assessment training was a rare privilege. This guidance covered everything from health & safety and lone working policies, to an insurance overview, incident reporting and informed consent and a risk assessment example and template.

The end result is a brilliant resource and achieves NYA’s remarkable vision, providing a risk management framework that can be applied to a broad range of activities and practice across the youth sector. The framework includes specific guidance topics arranged into four key areas of: Safe People; Safe Place & Activities; Safe Policy, Process & Procedure; and Safe Equipment & Resources.  It is all freely available to access here.

Supporting organisations working with young people has always been a focus for Pharos and we’re delighted to be doing just that with NYA. The scope of the ‘Hub’ is vast and we look forward to being part of its future development and maintenance over time.

Beyond the Hub, youth sector organisations will also be able to access further Pharos support including risk management training and incident response advice. Full details of all the services we offer to the youth sector are available here.